Fertility clinics plan to offer 'designer' baby services

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Fertility clinic to offer custom-designed babies
updated 4:19 p.m. CT, Tues., March. 3, 2009
Associated Press

NEW YORK - Do you want blue eyes with your baby? That's one of the questions a fertility clinic will be asking when it begin offering custom-designed babies to would-be moms and dads.

Dr. Jeff Steinberg, who operates clinics in Manhattan and Los Angeles, says that within six months he plans to let customers choose their baby's eye, hair, and even skin color, according to the New York Daily News.

Steinberg, who helped produce the first test-tube baby, acknowledges the technology is not 100 percent perfect and says best results are couples with Scandinavian heritage, whose gene pools are least diluted.

Critics, though, have blasted the idea of designer babies, likening it to the pursuit of a master race.

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This

I think it's pathetic that a parent would do this for their baby. All I ask for when I have a kid is that they are healthy.

ath3na wrote:

Video: http://www.yahoo.com/s/1038592
Text: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/2949637...#storyContinued

Fertility clinic to offer custom-designed babies
updated 4:19 p.m. CT, Tues., March. 3, 2009
Associated Press

NEW YORK - Do you want blue eyes with your baby? That's one of the questions a fertility clinic will be asking when it begin offering custom-designed babies to would-be moms and dads.

Dr. Jeff Steinberg, who operates clinics in Manhattan and Los Angeles, says that within six months he plans to let customers choose their baby's eye, hair, and even skin color, according to the New York Daily News.

Steinberg, who helped produce the first test-tube baby, acknowledges the technology is not 100 percent perfect and says best results are couples with Scandinavian heritage, whose gene pools are least diluted.

Critics, though, have blasted the idea of designer babies, likening it to the pursuit of a master race.

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Eugenics FTL.  Bad, bad, bad.

I'll have my baby shaken, not stirred.

The present is becoming the past with its theories of the future...

Fen wrote:

I'll have my baby shaken, not stirred.

LOLOLOLOLOL

but serious that's awful

Of course they are.  The customer is always right, correct?  If it can be customized people will want it, offspring included.  Personally I would like for my children to have blue eyes like I do.  But, if it doesn't happen I won't be heartbroken.

Your children are supposed to be the matching of two different beings merged into one.  Having some doctor getting his hands in my kid's DNA isn't something I'm too keen on.  Now if my child would've had an illness or birth defect I'd be more inclined to have it done.

I can just imagine the catalog in the lobby at fertility clinics in the future "New This Season: the Angelina Jolie Lip line!"

When it comes to this, I honestly don't know what to think. I'm a firm supporter for whatever seems like human evolution (things like growing new limbs and body parts from stem cells, robots, et cetera), but who's to say that putting this kind of power in the hands of any parent is something worse than contemporary trendiness... I mean, eyes and hair color are purely aesthetics, but the way we evolve--survival of the fittest, dominate genes, et cetera.

My problem comes from the fact that I believe fighting our most antagonistic diseases and viruses with genetics is something good, while this... I am not sure.

This will put undue stress in relationships I suspect. Couples arguing over eye color, etc and possibly splitting up over it? Think that sounds stupid? People have split up over less.

Who are we to play God?

"Gattaca! Gattaca!"

I'm all for trying to cure life-threatening conditions in utero, if necessary... but designer babies? As a person with a genetically-linked disability, I'm down on this completely. Kids are supposed to be their own unique selves, not a living, breathing Cabbage Patch doll tailored to their parents' desires. It's a given that kids are not going to be what you want them to be and that they will embarrass and disappoint you, unless you've emotionally abused them into being little Stepford kids or something.

What about all the "Be yourself!" messages that kids get hammered into them? Double standard much?

Sorry, things like this just really anger me.

GoDGiVeR wrote:

This

Worth the watch; short film, masterful computer animation, engaging art.

ath3na wrote:

GoDGiVeR wrote:

This

Worth the watch; short film, masterful computer animation, engaging art.

It is... Heart-breakingly beautiful...